Our Watchmen podcast kicks off in earnest as we break down the first issue of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ seminal comic book series, “At Midnight, All the Agents…” Spoilers abound, but find out more about the structure behind the issue, Easter eggs, and how it all might tie into the upcoming HBO series of the same name.

Alex: Now, we do need to apologize
before we get into the bulk of our podcast. We do have a fourth cohost.

Justin: Alan Moore is our fourth host for
this. He… We should say the writer of Watchmen, the comic book.

Alex: Yeah, so we’re very excited to
have him on board.

Justin: And eventually, obviously he took
his name off of the movie and the other comic book versions of it, and he was
going to be here today but he actually isn’t here. He’s actually at DC comics
physically taking his name off the comics.

Alex: Oh wow.

Pete: Oh wow.

Alex: That’s going to take him a
while. They have a lot of copies.

Pete: Yeah, it’s a long [crosstalk
00:00:52].

Justin: But he’s going to be here, he said
he’s definitely going to be here next week to talk about-

Alex: Well he better hurry up because
Watchmen is I think the highest selling graphic novel of all time.

Justin: It’s got a lot of-

Alex: A lot of copies.

Justin: A lot of white out. A lot of white
out coming in.

Alex: This guy is going to have to
invest in it.

Justin: Yes, no, and he likes to smell it
a little bit as well.

Pete: It’s going to take more time.

Alex: You probably know this, but
Watchmen the TV series, is not going to be on until October on HBO. So in the
intervening time, what we’re going to be doing on the next 12 episodes of
Watchmen Watch is we’re going to be looking back at the comic issue by issue.
And this week we’re going to be talking about the first issue of Watchmen At
Midnight, All the Agents. That’s based on a Bob Dylan quote, I believe you
dudes.

Justin: Yep.

Alex: Let’s talk about this issue. I
don’t know. I want to be honest about something upfront here.

Pete: Oh, here we go.

Alex: I want to be honest with you
guys.

Justin: Ooh. Confessions.

Pete: Oh. Confessions.

Alex: I read Watchmen, all in a
chunk, probably decades ago at this point.

Justin: Wow.

Alex: I think I read it maybe, or
skimmed it again, before the movie came out just so I could kind of familiarize
myself with it. But it’s been years since I actually read this book.

Pete: Are you talking about the 80s?
It’s been since the 80s?

Alex: The Zack Snyder Watchmen movie
did not come out in the 80s. What is your joke?

Pete: I don’t know.

Justin: The 80s is when it came out.

Pete: Yeah.

Justin: That’s when you were there.

Alex: The book. Yes. He was there
when Alan Moore was like, “The end.”

Justin: That’s why we got the connect.

Pete: Yeah. That’s how we got the
phone number.

Alex: Anyway, I haven’t actually
deeply read it in decades at this point. So doing that for this podcast,
actually taking the time to make sure that I synthesized as much of the words,
of the panels, and everything as possible, was first of all fascinating.
Because I don’t know if you guys know this, this is a very good comic.

Justin: This is a very good comic.

Alex: Yes. It’s very well done. Alan
Moore, good on writing. Dave Gibbons, very good on art.

Justin: He’s good on writing.

Alex: Yes.

Justin: He’s good on writing.

Pete: Very good on writing.

Justin: He’s as good on writing as you are
on saying that.

Alex: Yes, John Higgins on color. And
it was edited by Len Wein and Barbara Kesel. This is… I really honestly was
kind of blown away by how good this is.

Justin: Yeah.

Alex: Because we do a regular live
comic book talk show.

Pete: We do.

Alex: Watchmen comes up a lot when
we’re talking about it.

Justin: Yep.

Pete: Certainly.

Alex: So it’s almost become abstract
to me in terms of like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s the best comic book of
all time. I get it. That’s fine.”

Justin: Yeah, no exactly. You don’t think
about it as much anymore.

Alex: Right, but this is legitimately
an excellent comic book.

Justin: Breaking news. Breaking news.

Pete: [crosstalk 00:03:28] blown away
you are by this comic.

Justin: I felt the same way because…
Like Alex was saying, actually rereading it, the pacing of this comic book is
unbelievable.

Justin: Just how much control Alan Moore
has of the story from the jump and the art on top of that is just so good. Dave
Gibbons’ art, it’s so… It’s of the era but it also feels timeless. It has a
lot of the sort of dark shadowing to it, which gives it this sort of tense,
bleak tone, but it still feels just as relevant as modern art.

Alex: Well, I think just real quick,
the thing that I was going to say about the timeless thing, the thing that
struck me is so many things you go back and read and you’re like, “Oh
that, I can see how that worked at the time, why it was important.”

Justin: Yeah.

Alex: This is still a very good comic
book.

Pete: And it’s also one of those
things where the imagery and the stuff that they use in comics, everything that
I see kind of informs them. It’s like one of those things that sticks with you.
When I picture someone getting thrown out of a window, it’s always The
Comedian.

Justin: Yeah. What you picture often,
right?

Pete: Yeah.

Alex: Usually as you’re being thrown
out a window.

Pete: But it’s done so iconically and
so well-

Justin: First story windows.

Pete: Everything after that blows.

Justin: Yeah. The 9-panel grid that, it’s
used in this is sort of a, and it’s not all… There’s not nine panels on every
page, but using that grid as a basis, I feel like that’s something that a lot
of comic book artists are coming back to now.

Pete: Yeah. Especially recently.

Justin: I also want to say in the 80s,
this was in sort of the Cold War, like nuclear threat that definitely weighs
heavily on this series. And now we’re sort of back in international politics
being terrifying. Our American politics being expressed-

Pete: Keanu Reeves is popular again.
It’s like the 80s all over again.

Justin: He really weighs in here, the
Keanu Reeves of it all. So I do think rereading it now just in 2019 with our
politics and culture definitely feels more relevant now than it did even when I
read it in the 90s.

Pete: Oh wow.

Alex: Right. Well, you do have the
whole weight of the Doomsday Clock playing throughout it and that’s something
we regularly hear about right now.

Justin: It’s close.

Alex: Yes.

Justin: To Midnight in our time, now.

Alex: It is.

Justin: I think we’re going to get

[squidded 00:05:45]

right here in New York City.

Pete: Oh man.

Justin: That would be-

Alex: Squidded right here in New York
City.

Justin: That would be a fun surprise.

Pete: We should move, guys. We should
move.

Justin: But do you think… It wouldn’t
have the same impact because if we got squidded, we’d be like, “Oh,
squid.”

Justin: So we start with, as Pete
mentioned, a recap. Two cops are talking about the death of The Comedian.

Alex: Well, so let’s… This is one
other… I mean I was struck by a lot in the issue.

Justin: Yeah.

Alex: But one of the things I definitely
did not pick up on the first couple of times that I read it, is you have this
first page, it starts on The Comedian’s, now iconic, button in a pool of blood.
It pulls up, up, up, up, up as it goes up to this cop saying… What does he
say? “It’s a long drop?”

Justin: “Hmm. That’s quite a
drop.”

Alex: “That’s quite a
drop.” You have Rorschach’s [crosstalk 00:06:36] narration over the entire
thing, but you also have the guy that we don’t know yet is Rorschach walking
through the blood, trailing the blood as he goes.

Justin: Yeah.

Alex: Pulling it with him. He’s
pulling this death with him, which I think is very cool.

Pete: Yeah, he’s a creepy dude.

Justin: Yeah, as the cops are leaving
that’s when you really see Rorschach for the first time.

Pete: Right.

Alex: And we still don’t… In this
issue-

Justin: We do not.

Alex: We don’t know that he’s
Rorschach.

Justin: No.

Alex: But he is. This red-haired man
is Rorschach as we find out later in the series. But the thing that I thought
was so neat, when you look at it, is there’s three things in the issue, right?
There’s this first page where the cops are looking down at the pool of [blotted
death 00:00:07:12]. You have the final page where you have Dan Dreiberg and
Laurie Blake? Wait, Laurie-

Justin: Laurie Jupiter or Juspeczyk.

Alex: Jupiter. Yeah, exactly. Not
Laurie Blake. She’s Laurie Blake in the TV series. Laurie standing on that
rooftop and you have the same zoom-out at the same pace looking down above
them, which could imply that that’s another murder. That we’ve watched another
death happening at the same time.

Alex: But then you also have
Rorschach’s narration saying, “And I would look down at them and I would
say no.”

Justin: Yeah.

Alex: There’s so many different
layered things going on here at the same time.

Justin: And to add another layer, at that
last panel to me, it’s Doctor Manhattan spying on them-

Alex: Yes.

Justin: As Nite Owl’s out with his wife.

Alex: Right. And it’s his heart
dying, potentially. Well, if Doctor Manhattan potentially has a heart.

Justin: Yeah.

Alex: I mean that’s really up for-

Pete: A heart breaking.

Alex: Exactly.

Justin: Yeah.

Alex: The other thing that I was
really struck by in this issue as we walk through it, is it’s funny.

Justin: Yeah.

Alex: That’s something that I think
people forget about Watchmen is there’s some funny moments. There’s some weird
moments in here. It’s not… The wrong lesson that so many people have taken
from Watchmen is, “You’ve got to make things dark and serious.”

Justin: Yeah.

Alex: And that’s not what this book
is about at all.

Justin: In fact, it is dark and serious,
but it’s the feeling, the way that lands is by having comedy, which creates a
greater distance between the laughs to the really dark stuff. So you’re really
on a roller coaster ride.

Pete: So you’re asking yourself,
“Why so serious?”

Justin: Right. That’s exactly what my
point is.

Pete: Yeah.

Alex: Yeah. Watchmen walked so the
Dark Knight could run.

Justin: Watchmen watched so the Dark
Knight could watch harder.

Pete: Harder.

Alex: So we got that first page, you
want to move to-

Justin: Yeah. So we have… And these
cops, they seem sort of [scumbaggy 00:08:59] cops. And they’re sort of the
heroes here.

Pete: Classic.

Justin: And we’re seeing, interspersed
with their investigation of the crime scene, you see flashback the murder
happening of The Comedian, which was… Just hadn’t seen that before when I
first read this. And, reading here, it’s really well-paced and it really
creates this essential mystery. And at the same time, we don’t know who The
Comedian is.

Alex: Right?

Justin: We don’t know this is a take on a
Justice League-type team until much later. Not even in this issue.

Alex: Yeah. There’s something this
issue does. Another thing this issue does very well, is introduce all the
characters in a very fluid way through both these detectives initially, and
then through Rorschach’s investigation where he approaches each of the
characters. But it never feels like, “And now meet this character. And now
meet this character.” And part of the reason is that Moore and Gibbons,
Gibbons through the body language of the characters, but Moore through the
writing, has set up all of these backstories and all this history. So people
are not coming into it as, “We are fresh friends who have met each other
for the first time.”

Justin: Yeah.

Alex: It’s when Nite Owl and
Rorschach see each other for the first time. It’s for the first time in years.

Justin: Yeah.

Alex: And they broke apart and at
least one of them doesn’t know why.

Justin: And you feel the weight of their
relationship on all of these characters.

Alex: Yes.

Pete: I really do think that because
we read so many comic books, we can kind of tell at this point when people are
just moving characters around to get them to a certain thing for something they
have planned. And this is done in such a creative way. You don’t feel like
they’re just moving characters.

Alex: It’s very fluid in terms of
introducing the characters, in terms of the plot. Alan Moore, again, huge
shocker here, a very good writer. But he knows how to get us across both plot
and character at the same time because of all of the dialogue.

Justin: It would have been great if he was
here to answer some of these questions I’m asking [crosstalk 00:00:10:51].

Alex: It’s a real disappointment to
me.

Justin: He is going to be here next week,
as we keep saying.

Alex: Yes. I’m excited. We’ll save
some of the questions while we talk about episode two.

Justin: Definitely. Definitely.
Definitely. Definitely. Yeah, so the spine of the issue is Rorschach sort of
going around to the different heroes and warning them like, “Hey, The
Comedian is dead and you might be next.”

Pete: Right.

Justin: And it’s telling them-

Pete: And what a good friend.

Justin: Yes, he’s a good friend but he
also is… He feels like he’s the one character after their super team broke
up. And you feel the sadness for everyone in different ways. Like Nite Owl,
he’s sad because he doesn’t have anything else going on in his life. He’s
visiting the original Nite Owl who also has a sad life and wrote a book about
superheroes. As he visits everyone, it’s clear it was a bad relationship. Their
relationships have not maintained throughout. But he’s the only one who’s sort
of still in his mode, on the case trying to figure this out.

Pete: Yeah.

Justin: So you definitely identify with
him as the character, the hero driving through.

Pete: Oh yeah.

Justin: But some of the things we were
talking about before, he is saying some stuff that now, I’m in our modern politics
and culture. He’s saying some pretty out-right shit here.

Alex: Yes. I do not think you’re
supposed to identify with Rorschach at all.

Justin: Really?

Alex: No, I really don’t think so.

Pete: He’s the only guy I identify
with.

Alex: Really? What do you identify
with in him? And I’m scared to ask.

Pete: The way that he doesn’t trust
people, the way that he feels like he is creepier or dirtier than people. The
way he lives is different.

Justin: He’s an outsider?

Pete: He’s an outsider. Yeah, thank
you.

Justin: Yeah.

Pete: And also the fact that he covers
his face and doesn’t show people kind of who he is and what he’s about.

Justin: I think that’s the trap. That’s
the trap of what you were saying before about the lesson a lot of comic book
writers and companies took from this was like, “Oh, we gotta do
this.” I think now after we’ve read hundreds of issues of The Punisher and
all these other darker heroes that came out after Watchmen, it’s tricked us
into thinking we should identify with Rorschach when really he has just as
many-

Pete: Plus, he’s fucked up.

Alex: He’s violent.

Justin: He’s super violent.

Pete: Which is great.

Justin: He’s a loner. He considers the
rest of the world filth and just like an [abattoir 00:13:13].

Alex: Let’s talk about that a little
bit because his… It’s interesting. I’m sure there’s much better ways of
saying this in a much… There’s been so much research and writing about
Watchmen in the intervening years, but he’s Rorschach, right? Like his mask is
a fluid Rorschach test that people can ostensibly see whatever they want.

Justin: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Alex: They look at him and they see
whatever they want in him, but everybody sees the same thing in Rorschach.

Justin: Yeah.

Alex: Everybody sees exactly who he
is and he is pretty straight up exactly who he is at the same time. Versus
everybody else who is currently, they’re not wearing masks. They’re all
supposedly being who they are, including say, and this is a huge spoiler if
you’ve never watched Watchmen, but Adrian Veidt, Ozymandias, who is the real
villain of the series, he’s not wearing a mask right now. He’s not wearing a
costume. He’s like, “This is who I am. I’m a businessman. I’m smart, but
I’m not really the smartest man in the world. This is me upfront.” But
everybody else is hiding something.

Justin: Yeah, except Rorschach.

Alex: Rorschach’s the only one-

Pete: Rorschach’s [crosstalk 00:14:21]
honest one.

Justin: Rorschach is calling them out.
He’s going out and calling each of them out in these missions.

Alex: Right. So I guess what I was
getting around to is the point that I think he wants you to see whatever you
see in the world on him, but all he sees in the world is that filth. Is that
disgustingness, is everybody is airing on the side of bad. That’s why he makes
this, frankly crazy assumption off of one murder, that somebody is killing capes.

Justin: Yeah.

Alex: You know, there’s really no
evidence there and he’s not necessarily wrong, but he’s not necessarily right
either. It’s because he goes to, The Comedian is dead, what is the worst case
scenario?

Justin: Yeah.

Alex: And the worst case scenario is
they’re coming for all of us.

Pete: Right.

Alex: He lives walking through that
puddle of blood all the time.

Justin: And he comments so much on the
culture.

Pete: Yeah.

Justin: But at the same time he’s a
reflection of all of the comments he’s making. He is the Rorschach test for the
culture.

Alex: Right.

Justin: But like some of the [outrights
00:15:18] tell you.

Pete: Are you okay, are you dying
there?

Justin: Sorry. Yeah, I’m choking. The
truth… Betraying even his own shallow liberal affectations. There’s just some
stuff in here that really hit me in this rereading of it in our modern world
where the… In all this kind of language and mentality really like
proliferates on Reddit and different spots on the internet where a lot of bad
shit comes out of it.

Alex: Yeah. Now, one other visual
thing that I really loved throughout the issue, just in terms of the body
language, there’s so many little subtle things that happen. There is a…
There’s a bunch of graffiti like, “Who watches the Watchmen?” But
it’s kind of cut off each time. I don’t think we see it fully each time it pops
up.

Justin: No.

Alex: There’s also pirate comics
throughout, which I think we should talk about the whole comic book, in a
second when we get to the Under the Hood, because there’s some fascinating
stuff there. But there’s this little moment where Rorschach takes a pocket full
of sugar cubes, they never talk about it, and then five pages later he’s eating
a sugar cube and it’s so gross. He’s like a fly who’s feasting on garbage the
entire time.

Pete: Yeah.

Justin: He eats a can of cold beans.

Alex: I don’t know why you’re still
into this after we talked about it.

Pete: I love it. I love how gross he
is.

Alex: Let’s talk about the Doctor
Manhattan stuff.

Justin: Yeah, so after Rorschach goes to
Nite Owl, who’s living a sad life, he goes and beats up a bunch of people in a
bar.

Pete: Yeah!

Justin: To try, what Pete obviously likes,
to try to figure out… And they’re like-

Alex: I really think you’re taking
the wrong lessons from this comic book.

Justin: Yeah.

Pete: Cool.

Justin: It’s crazy though. He calls it his
exercise and it’s just… Because there’s no real, it was a one-person job
killing The Comedian. The fact that there would be henchmen there. It seems
like he’s doing this fully just to beat people up for [crosstalk 00:17:02].

Alex: Yeah. Absolutely.

Pete: Well, it’s his exercise. Some
people like to walk in the park. Other people have gym memberships. He goes to
a bar-

Justin: All equally reasonable things.

Pete: Yep.

Justin: He goes and talks to Ozymandias.
Veidt, who’s a corporate sellout basically, shits on him a little bit. Then he
goes to talk to Doctor Manhattan who lives in the… Works for the government,
is still ostensibly a mask. He’s distant from the world. We see this great
panel where he’s three stories tall to first meet him.

Alex: Yeah.

Justin: Such a great visual.

Alex: And everything else throughout
the book, for the most part, is very, very tight. It holds that 9-panel grid
until we see Doctor Manhattan where it completely opens up.

Justin: Yeah.

Alex: And this gets to something that
I think… Also in particular, not to lump on it too much, but the Zack Snyder
movie got completely wrong about Watchmen, is these aren’t superheroes.

Justin: No.

Alex: These are regular people. Even
Adrian Veidt is, certainly he’s pushing down his intelligence a little bit.

Justin: Yeah.

Alex: He’s trying to be modest about
it, but he’s not actually the smartest man in the world. He just has a lot of
resources at this point.

Justin: Yeah.

Alex: Same with Rorschach. Rorschach
isn’t super strong. The Comedian isn’t super strong. Superheroes have developed
in a way, but they’re really just humans.

Justin: Yeah.

Alex: The one exception is Doctor
Manhattan. But the other thing that I think even everybody gets wrong about
Doctor Manhattan, that’s very clear in this issue, is he’s not all powerful.

Justin: No.

Alex: He doesn’t know everything and
he can’t do everything.

Justin: No, and he’s even learning about
his powers. The whole series is about him figuring out what it means to be this
sort of godlike person, but he doesn’t have command of it. And he’s so obsessed
with research that he’s not able… It’s not about power for him.

Alex: Right.

Justin: It’s about, “Oh, I can look
into this now.”

Alex: Right.

Justin: It’s like someone who would have
the internet for the first time. Like a scientist having the internet is what
Doctor Manhattan feels like in this.

Alex: Yeah. So we do get this great
character scene and we get to see a lot of what’s going on with Doctor
Manhattan. We get to see what’s going on with Laurie and also Rorschach, who
she doesn’t like at all. And then we get the other big plot that’s gonna play
out throughout the series, which they dance around for the first half of the
issue very purposely until Laurie comes out and says it, which is that The
Comedian raped her mom.

Justin: Yeah.

Alex: He raped her mom, he assaulted
her mom. That came out during the Hollis Mason, who’s the original Nite Owl in
his book Under the Hood, and she believes the story. Rorschach is not 100%
sure, if I remember correctly.

Justin: Yeah. And she actually says
almost. She doesn’t say it.

Alex: Right.

Justin: So everyone, it’s like a suspicious,
you don’t know what the deal is in this moment.

Alex: Right. And we’re still learning
a lot about these characters. We don’t even really… We haven’t heard The
Comedian say a word.

Justin: We don’t know anything about
anything in this.

Alex: Right.

Justin: And it’s crazy how much they just
give us right out of the gate and we’re just like, “Okay, we’ll keep up
with this.” It’s dense in a great way.

Alex: And then at the end, we see
Nite Owl and Laurie end up going on a pseudo-date together.

Justin: Yeah.

Alex: It’s not supposed to be a date.
It’s mostly catching up. But they both like it because they’re friends. One
thing that I do want to point out that I thought was kind of fascinating,
there’s little things here. This is an alternate history. It’s split off from
some point, both from our world, from the DC Universe, from anything else.
There are little things. I believe there’s a turkey there with four legs that
they’re serving at the restaurant. And there are other things like that that
give you little indicators, not just through the fashion but literally the
things that people are eating. The world is a little different.

Justin: Oh yeah.

Alex: Yeah.

Justin: That feels like… The turkey with
four legs feels like a mistake, but maybe not.

Alex: No, I don’t think it is.

Justin: Really? It’s so small in this
panel.

Alex: If you have a world, again
jumping to the end here, where Ozymandias is able to build genetically a cat
creature. He’s able to build a squid.

Justin: Yeah.

Alex: What’s to say he hasn’t also
done that where, “Great, we’ve created a Turkey with a little more meat on
it.”

Justin: That’s true. That’s fair.

Pete: Yeah.

Justin: We do get a mention of Action
Comics in the back matter, an excerpt from Under the Hood, which is the book
that the first Nite Owl read. Was sort of a superhero tell-all, which I reread
for this as well and man, it’s so good.

Alex: I want to say I reread it, but
this is another… This is the second thing I wanted to be honest with you guys
about, I don’t think I ever read it.

Justin: Oh really?

Alex: I don’t. I think I completely
was like, “Eh, word book. No thanks.”

Pete: Yeah, that’s exactly [crosstalk
00:21:12].

Alex: And I was so wrong because
reading it for this, I was blown away.

Justin: The first story, it’s sort of the
intro to the book and it’s just a story about him and his dad at this
auto-mechanic shop that he worked at. It’s such a great, short story.

Alex: It’s a great short story. It
parallels what went on in the first issue. But from a continuity standpoint,
when you’re talking about that alternative evolution, as you mentioned, he
talks about, Hollis Mason talks about, “Oh, I remember reading Action
Comics and seeing the introduction of Superman, but the alternate history of
Watchmen, what actually happened was they released Action Comics.” It was
big, people loved it, but then a couple of years later, the first vigilante
hooded justice showed up and then people didn’t need superhero comics anymore
because superheroes existed in real life and that’s why pirate comics became
the biggest thing.

Justin: Yeah.

Alex: So when we link up in the
current continuity in Watchmen, everybody reads pirate comics and we’re going
to get into that pretty soon with the Black Freighter-

Pete: Curse of the Black Freighter.

Alex: Curse of the Black Freighter,
and everything else, which again provides a lot of parallels for what’s going
on. But yeah, I felt super dumb for having not read it that first time through.

Justin: Yeah, no, it’s so good. Just
rereading it I was like, “Oh right, I forgot how good this was.”

Alex: Yeah, definitely check out
Watchmen #1 from DC comics.

Justin: Well, you can’t recommend it.

Alex: Oh man.

Justin: Find it if you’re-

Pete: [Hard take 00:22:37]. Hard take.

Alex: All right. Next week we are
going to be talking about the second issue of Watchmen, so be sure to read it
before then if you want to check it out with us. And of course as the series
gets closer we’ll talk more and more about that. You could support this podcast
at patreon.com/comicbookclub. Also, we do a live show every Tuesday night at
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Thanks for the recent mention of my comment regarding “Nimrod.” I didn’t mean for it to sound as critical as you seem to have taken it.

Nonetheless, I really enjoyed this episode of “Watching the Watchmen: Agents Assemble at Midnight…” and the references to such things as the four-legged turkey, especially the argument about Ozymandias being able to create one genetically.

While you are talking about subtle references, did you know that “Watching the Watchmen” has been used a couple of times before you? Frederick Wright used “Watching Watchmen: The Reading of Motion Comics” in International Journal of Comic Art (14:2, Fall, 2012), interesting reading despite the failure of “motion comics.” Of course, you probably were inspired by Gibbons’ own work, Watching the Watchmen: The Definitive Companion to the Ultimate Graphic Novel (London: Titan Publishing). Again, these references are not intended to criticize anything you said on the podcast or your title, just interesting enough to me that I thought I’d share with you.

Also interesting to me (and you’ll probably get to this when you discuss issue #2) are the Travis Bickle, Taxi Driver references from the Scorsese film. For example, the quotation you referenced in the podcast (from issue #1): “The accumulated filth of all their sex and murder will foam up about their waists and all the whores and politicians will look up and shout, ‘Save us!'” [BTW, isn’t that redundant? “whores and politicians?” — my bad] sounds a lot like: “All the animals come out at night — whores, skunk pussies, buggers, queens, fairies, dopers, junkies, sick, venal. Someday a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets.” [The film quotation is from less than 5 minutes into the film.]
Philipp Fidler and Johannes Fehrle noted in an article (“‘What’s Happened to the American Dream?’ Transnationalism and Intertexts in Alan Moore’s and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen” International Journal of Comic Art (15,2 (Fall, 2013), p. 506 how similar the woman in the window in issue #1, p. 24 is to the woman in the window when the psychotic husband tells Bickle what he intends to do with his Magnum ’44. This is a turning point in Bickle’s life, even as this is a visual reference before Rorschach monologues about the Comedian’s “fall” from the window. And, while possibly coincidence, the same article cites the similarity between Rorschach walking down a street in Times Square (complete with presumed streetwalker) with Bickle on the movie poster with advertisements for all of the sex establishments in the background (p. 507).
Also, did you notice that Hollis Mason has the book, Gladiator (by Philip Wylie), on his shelf? Wasn’t that one of the novels that inspired Superman?
You’ll probably also address Dave Gibbons’ comment that he deliberately emulated the war room from Dr. Strangelove to invoke that feeling of Mutually Assured Destruction from the Cold War era when you get to that.

These are all GREAT notes, and thank you for listening! No worries on the Nimrod thing, it was fine!

For the title, we went through a bunch of possibilities, and were iffy on using something that was close to a lot of other things – but ultimately felt it was the simplest, most straightforward title for the podcast, so went for that!

It’s funny, I never really thought about the taxi driver of it all, but that makes a lot of sense.

And great note on the Dr. Strangelove stuff! We’ve read a lot about the issues, but we’re definitely not as exhaustive as we could be, so all of this info is very welcome!